Christian Pelras And His Work: 17 August 1934–19 July 2014

Those of us who work in the human sciences are, of necessity, involved with the task of interpretation: interpreting the past to the present, interpreting the ways of "others" to our own society, or even interpreting our own society to itself. Bugis society in the second half of the 20t...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Macknight, Campbell
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM Press) 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:http://eprints.usm.my/41175/
http://eprints.usm.my/41175/1/Art.-2-IJAPS-12Supp.-1-2016-7-11.pdf
_version_ 1848879220882669568
author Macknight, Campbell
author_facet Macknight, Campbell
author_sort Macknight, Campbell
building USM Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description Those of us who work in the human sciences are, of necessity, involved with the task of interpretation: interpreting the past to the present, interpreting the ways of "others" to our own society, or even interpreting our own society to itself. Bugis society in the second half of the 20th century was fortunate indeed to have had Christian Pelras as its interpreter. He himself describes the work of ethnology as "a dialogue between our culture and the culture of others" (Pelras 2010: 7). For the most part, he wrote for a scholarly Francophone audience but, as time went on, more of his writing appeared in English and some in Indonesian. A strength of Pelras' work in Indonesia was his thorough education in western European culture, including its languages and literature. He had a firm foundation from which to conduct his "dialogue," and the dialogue went both ways. His research career in Indonesia was inter-twined with a parallel interest in Brittany. In December 1961, he returned from almost a year in Indonesia, his first visit, and was soon engaged in an interdisciplinary project at home. Much of the next few years were spent in Goulien, a tiny village in the extreme northwest corner of France, and his doctoral thesis, completed in 1966, deals with this research. A revised version, incorporating new fieldwork, was published in 2001. His memory is much cherished in Goulien and in November 2014 the new local library was named in his honour.
first_indexed 2025-11-15T17:43:47Z
format Article
id usm-41175
institution Universiti Sains Malaysia
institution_category Local University
language English
last_indexed 2025-11-15T17:43:47Z
publishDate 2016
publisher Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM Press)
recordtype eprints
repository_type Digital Repository
spelling usm-411752018-07-30T03:40:06Z http://eprints.usm.my/41175/ Christian Pelras And His Work: 17 August 1934–19 July 2014 Macknight, Campbell P1-1091 Philology. Linguistics(General) Those of us who work in the human sciences are, of necessity, involved with the task of interpretation: interpreting the past to the present, interpreting the ways of "others" to our own society, or even interpreting our own society to itself. Bugis society in the second half of the 20th century was fortunate indeed to have had Christian Pelras as its interpreter. He himself describes the work of ethnology as "a dialogue between our culture and the culture of others" (Pelras 2010: 7). For the most part, he wrote for a scholarly Francophone audience but, as time went on, more of his writing appeared in English and some in Indonesian. A strength of Pelras' work in Indonesia was his thorough education in western European culture, including its languages and literature. He had a firm foundation from which to conduct his "dialogue," and the dialogue went both ways. His research career in Indonesia was inter-twined with a parallel interest in Brittany. In December 1961, he returned from almost a year in Indonesia, his first visit, and was soon engaged in an interdisciplinary project at home. Much of the next few years were spent in Goulien, a tiny village in the extreme northwest corner of France, and his doctoral thesis, completed in 1966, deals with this research. A revised version, incorporating new fieldwork, was published in 2001. His memory is much cherished in Goulien and in November 2014 the new local library was named in his honour. Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM Press) 2016 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://eprints.usm.my/41175/1/Art.-2-IJAPS-12Supp.-1-2016-7-11.pdf Macknight, Campbell (2016) Christian Pelras And His Work: 17 August 1934–19 July 2014. International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies (IJAPS), 12 (1). pp. 7-11. ISSN ISSN: 1823-6243 http://ijaps.usm.my/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Art.-2-IJAPS-12Supp.-1-2016-7-11.pdf
spellingShingle P1-1091 Philology. Linguistics(General)
Macknight, Campbell
Christian Pelras And His Work: 17 August 1934–19 July 2014
title Christian Pelras And His Work: 17 August 1934–19 July 2014
title_full Christian Pelras And His Work: 17 August 1934–19 July 2014
title_fullStr Christian Pelras And His Work: 17 August 1934–19 July 2014
title_full_unstemmed Christian Pelras And His Work: 17 August 1934–19 July 2014
title_short Christian Pelras And His Work: 17 August 1934–19 July 2014
title_sort christian pelras and his work: 17 august 1934–19 july 2014
topic P1-1091 Philology. Linguistics(General)
url http://eprints.usm.my/41175/
http://eprints.usm.my/41175/
http://eprints.usm.my/41175/1/Art.-2-IJAPS-12Supp.-1-2016-7-11.pdf